See that fabulously embroidered rusty orange shirt up there? It began life as a boringly beastly black batwing top.
Here’s how to upsize a shirred top (a batwing shirt refashion):
Ugh! A too tight shirred waist, annoying flappy sleeves and nearly invisible embroidery!
I really wanted to take that embroidery out of the shadows so I gave the shirt a 30 minute bath in bleach.
Get my top tips and techniques for bleaching garments here.
Once laundered, I flipped it inside out and carefully removed that tight shirring at the waist and side seams.
I then stitched the front and back together again to create a new side seam and much improved sleeve shape (+ salvage some more of that lovely embroidery that was previously hidden by the annoying batwing sleeves)
Then folded the shirt in half and used the first finished seams as a template for the other side.
Once the new side seams were created and all of the excess fabric chopped off I zigzagged the interior seams for extra strength and my groovy new top was nearly complete.
A second bath in “rusty orange” dye finished it off! Check out that (now visible) fab embroidery!
Snag my tips and tricks for dyeing fabrics here.
That too tight flappy sleeved top is now transformed into a loose and breezy wardrobe fave!
– Be sure to check out my all new upsizing tutorial category for more groovy fixes –
Want to transform your entire wardrobe for pennies? Grab all of my groovy CoaR tutorial collections right here:
Wow . great work on sleeves 😉
Thanks very much, it was such a great transformation! 😀
MUCH better- I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for one of those! 🙂
Yup…when I first saw it I knew I could make it better but I had no idea it would so easily improve as much as it did 😉
Wow, you couldn’t even notice the embroidery in the first! Absolutely gorgeous! And geez, that must’ve been a pain to rip out all the shirring! I would’ve been worried that the scrunching would’ve been visible forever afterwards, but it looks perfect. Before reading all the way through I was scrutinizing the top picture, trying to figure out where the seam was where you sewed the parts together after having cut out the shirring. Smart, smart Sheri! 🙂 Lisa
Thanks chickaboo! The shirring wasn’t too much of a pain actually…once I had both ends of the elastic thread free I just had to (oh-so-carefully) pull it through the fabric, then it was a snap to pull out the remaining loose threads that had held it in place 😉
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful idea! And the embroidery is enhanced by simply changing the color!
Grande Sheri! 🙂
Grazie Anna! I’m so happy the embroidery isn’t hidden anymore…it is way too pretty not to show off 😉